Tag Archives: security

It occurred to me after reading my last post on the cautionary tales of Black Mirror, that for those of you who don’t know, there are several key things we can all do to help protect from the scourge of identity theft, social shaming, unwanted surveillance, loss of privacy, etc. Do you know these things?

The only reason I know these things so well, if because of my colleagues #Mark Egan, #LarsRabbe, (thanks guys), Mad Security, the genius inventors of @Splunk, and a host of other folks who, during my continuing career in Information Tech, have taught me about the increasing risk of security hacks, and the frankly rather basic things we must all do to protect ourselves.

Hopefully we all know by now why tech is getting so exciting – why we will be able to do things for ourselves that were previously unimaginable, as this all gets so much better, this consumer-driven high tech world we are living in. Hopefully you know about online banking, Fitbit, Juul ecigs, Waze, Uber, Tesla, iRhythm, and that toilet in The Island where Ewan McGregor pees after waking and it tells him “no bacon today.” (Okay on that last one, we must be close to having those, right? I want bacon!)

Want to take advantage of all of this amazing technology without worrying every single second about its disadvantages? Want to watch Black Mirror and not feel sick? Do you already play safely on the Internet, by following the rules, both basic and advanced? Here’s the test…. remember, it starts basic, gets a bit harder:

Set a password/screen saver on your Mac/PC/Table/Phone – time out those devices

Encrypt your Mac or PC – its easy with the ones that come with your Mac or PC. Get an antivirus package.

At work if your IT department did not yet implement Okta (or equivalent) and some small bit of MDM (doesn’t matter who) – give ‘em hell (I know I’m a CIO – so just do it nicely). Okta, makes it so that when you are in the office, you log into all your company’s applications with one regular, strong password. But if you are logging in from home or a coffee shop, you get to use that SAME single password, BUT Okta will text a code to your phone so you can prove who you are. That’s called “Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)” Also, MDM means “Mobile Device Management” – which means if you lose your phone or tablet, your IT group can wipe it clean so no thieves get your company and your personal data. You can also enable this for yourself, but good to have an IT team behind you as well. Don’t store files from work on your phone, tablet, etc. anyway.

Use Dropbox or Box or Google or MSFT for your files – your goal young Padawan, is to store NOTHING in file format on your “Black Mirror” – everything in the cloud, backed up and protected is the way.

Let’s punch that last point, fundamentally, work it out on your phone, Mac, or PC so that you store almost NOTHING natively on the device. What Doug? Yes, stream your music, your photos, your videos from cloud services, store youyr files in Box, Dropbox, Google, MSFT – if you have NOTHING natively on your phone, and you lose it, buy/lease another phone, you should be up and running within 15 minutes. That’s your goal friends.

Do NOT open emails from people you don’t know – in particular do NOT click on any link they send you. This counts at Facebook, and other social media sites. Doing this by mistake will quite possibly infect you with an “advanced persistent threat (APT)” – these are small programs, given you by bad actors on the internet (again no clicking on links you don’t know) and they insinuate themselves into your company’s systems, onto your laptops, etc. The kind of things they can then do are things like “send all your files, customer records, anything else out of your “network” over to wherever-the-f__-they are, so they can rip us off. Heard of Target, Equifax, other disasters of security? That’s how they do it – and 90% of the time it’s our fault, the employees, who thought it would be fun to click on Uncle Fester’s Daily Joke email.

Stop all paper statements from coming to you in the mail. Shred anything with your personal/banking or other data on it. If you do get paper, Office Max will shred in bulk over at Iron Mountain – the best.

Go through your filing cabinet, remove all old paperwork that’s available online, old statements, all that crap you are keeping – I took 39 lbs of paper to Office Max for shredding the first time I got it thru my head that keeping this stuff was dangerous

Have your bills, other “payables” pay automatically off your American Express card. Amex (sorry pretenders elsewhere) has the best security protocols, and best customer service. Have the “card” text you every time it is used. You will get a lot of texts (if you spend like me) but they will bring you inner peace as you see bills paid, and know no one is using your card but you.

Pay your Amex card once a month. All of it. Carry no interest on bank cards.

Use a service to check your credit score frequently. Close all credit accounts you aren’t using and some that you ARE using. Keep enough of a combined credit line to get out of trouble if a spending emergency comes (like, LCD Soundsystem is coming in concert –need to get 4 tickets!!!!). Remember, old cards, unclosed old accounts, and open accounts with high spending limits all add to your “potential liability” in your credit score – clean it up – I like Credit Karma for managing all this.

Freeze your credit bureaus – I’m told that if you freeze your accounts at the three main agencies (TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian) you can help prevent people from opening accounts in your name.

Take old computers, tablets, phones, etc. to a reputable company – we have one here on Haight Street, who will wipe it – erase your data, private records, everything, and donate to schools.

How many did you get right?

Sounds complicated but none of the above actually IS complicated – that’s the dirty secret of IT (heh heh).

Some people say to me, Doug, why cloud (basically servers at data centers tht are run by professionals – that’s cloud), why store everything elsewhere, not on the notebook I keep in my grubby hands? Well young panther, because they have 10 security guys whose kung fu is better than your one guy’s kung fu. Get Splunk and ask your IT guys to examine how much b__sh__ unknown traffic is coming in and out of your network. Conversely, hook Splunk up to Box, or Amazon EC2, or Salesforce, or Netsuite, go the the beach, and have a Mai Ti while Splunk shows you that no dirty players are logging into your systems, reading or copying your files, etc. We can and do beat these bad actors – don’t let them ruin your digitally-native life.